This invention pertains generally to a strip of collated nails for use in a nail-feeding magazine of a pneumatically powered, combustion-powered, or other rapidly acting, nail-driving tool.
A common method of collating nails for use in such a magazine is disclosed in Langas et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,276,576. The nails, which have vull heads and cylindrical shanks, are collated by a pair of tapes of a uniform thickness. Each tape extends across the nail shanks and is adhered to a respective one of diametrically opposed areas on the shank of each nail in the strip. Heat-sensitive adhesive is used to adhere the tapes to the shank areas.
As illustrated and described in the Langas et al. patent noted above, the nails may be alternatively disposed with their heads in a tiered relationship or with their heads in a coplanar relationship, a tiered relationship being typical. It is not necessary for the nails to have full heads. D-shaped, so-called clipped heads are known, which allow spacing between successive nails to be substantially reduced, particularly but not exclusively if their heads are in a tiered relationship. See, e.g., Shelton et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,966,042, which discloses collated nails having D-shaped heads.
Because the shanks have a uniform diameter and the tapes have a uniform thickness, an overall thickness of the strip of collated nails, as measured at the collating tapes, can be precisely controlled within normal manufacturing tolerances. Thus, a nail-feeding magazine of a nail-driving tool, a discussed above, can be dimensionally adapted to feed a strip having an overall thickness, as measured similarly, which is selected so as to enable the nail-feeding magazine to feed the strip without allowing the shanks of the nails to wobble excessively.
If the shanks of the nails were to wobble excessively, the nail-driving tool might be easily jammed, particularly but not exclusively if plural strips were loaded serially so as to reside simultaneously in the nail-feeding magazine whereupon such strips could cross over, i.e., move out of a coplanar relationship between nail axes of a preceding strip and nail axes of a following strip.
An improved collating method of related interest, wherein a filament is disposed under compression between the nail shanks so as to maintain spacing therebetween, is disclosed in Shelton et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,343,579.
A limitation of such collating methods, heretofore, has been that a nail-driving tool having a nail-feeding magazine adapted to guide a strip of collated nails having shanks of a given diameter, as collated by tapes of a given thickness, could not be ordinarily used to feed a stirp of collated nails having shanks of a smaller diameter, since the smaller shanks would tend to wobble excessively and to jam the nail-driving tool. Conversely, such a strip of collated nails having shanks of a given diameter could not be ordinarily fed by a nail-feeding magazine that was oversized, i.e., sized for such a strip of collated nails having shanks of a larger diameter.
A collating method of related interest is disclosed in Leistner U.S. Pat. No. 4,679,975. The nails are collated by a wire, which is welded to one side of the nail shanks, or by a pair of such wires, each of which is welded to one side of the nail shanks. Each wire is coated with a layer of thermoplastic or other material. In one embodiment, as shown in FIG. 7, the coating layer appears to have been applied as a strip.